Here’s yet another clinic that had to decide with the 2% pay cuts from Medicare to either cut the patients or only have 2-6 months left to stay in business. 2% doesn’t sound like a lot but when an oncology office is ordering and stocking (and paying up front for expensive cancer drugs) it add up quickly. One patient’s cost may be $10,000 a month as shown in the video so add on 5,000 patients which is the number that will now be turned away in order to survive and that’s a lot of money. Payment on the drugs can be slow too and then sometimes not only with Medicare but commercial insurers as well there are problems getting reimbursed. One more thing not as nice about going to a hospital is the exposure to hospital acquired diseases as well…wait a minute doesn’t Medicare want to bring those numbers down? Where’ their common sense here or did they go off the algorithm cliff like so many?

The patient in the video says Washington should all be fired for this and almost cries. It is ridiculous too that Medicare can’t negotiate it’s own drug cost and that has been a bone of contention for years. Again just like on Wall Street we have this selfish greed attitude and folks don’t realize the impact of their decisions or in this case non decisions impact people. It’s not like it used to be with taking time to roll down as data is connected and these impact happen in real time too. Here's he story of a couple more clinics from a few days ago.

The government is totally duped by the insurers on much of what goes on and a big award this week was given to the insurers for private Medicare plans. Again we don’t have anyone at the top of the helm running HHS and giving sufficient direction and you can see the result with an executive who can’t think the way a tech person would or a combination tech person, so this is what we get. So far I have noticed two of the big cabinet members not taking a pay cut are HHS and DOJ, the two that I say are the most digitally challenged in the cabinet, based on what they put in the news half the time. Medicare is also stuck on some lab test policies so those are stacking up not paid as well and I would bet we have some oncology tests in there as well that are not getting paid.

Digital illiteracy and the understanding of how IT Infrastructure is killing the public a little at a time and gee I have not found any Congressional leader yet that talks about wanting to learn new tricks either. Watch those videos in the footer of this blog for a start, good for anyone to see. More video from Fox News on the situation…BD

Dark Arts of Mathemical Deception

Professor Charlie Siefe of NYU, a mathematician debunks clinical trials, and few other items to where data is spun and fools you, every day example, hear about the perfect butt algorithm and more. These are probably some things you have never thought about but again after listening to what he has to say, it’s time to think about being skeptical. Here’s a radio show that also talks about the same topics.

This video digs in a bit further with how fictitious business models are used by banks and companies do this too. The models are so complex that CEOs don’t even understand them. “Quants, The Alchemists of Wall Street will take you through how “math models” work at banks and financial institutions in a way that even the layman can understand. More videos like over at theAlgo Duping/Killer Algorithm Page. Bank of America will also tell you“IT’ is a business” how they make money.

Weapons of Math Destruction

This is a lecture where Kathy O’Neill, a former Quant who worked for a Hedge Fund (Weapons of Math Destruction) on Wall Street will tell you what is done with your retirement money and more. The banks and companies use technology to take advantage because they can. “Of course we are going to take advantage because our tools are our brains…if they could figure out a way to take advantage of pension funds they would, a good interview with explaining smart money and dumb money.

Algorithms Shape The World

This is a very good presentation done a TED Conference and really was the one that got everyone started thinking about algorithms and today it’s talked about a lot. As he says “if you’re an algorithm, life is looking pretty good, but can’t say the same for humans”. What is a black box? Nobody has any control over the flash crash. We have moved forward a bit but still we are writing the unreadable and lost the sense of some of what is happening. Nice plug for Nanex here with research.